As we get deeper into the 21st
century, some of the same issues raised at the beginning of the last
century are emerging today, particularly in the area of education. The
exhibition examines “the material world of children from utopian dreams
as citizens of the future to the dark realities of political conflict
and exploitation.” Sound familiar? During the last century, modern
architects and designers preoccupied themselves with childhood, including
school architecture, clothing, playgrounds, toys, games, and a lot
more. MoMA produced a wonderful interactive website
to go along with this exhibit. The timeline walks the visitor through the
objects on display by period, complete with detailed information and
related works.

The exhibition starts at the turn of
the last century when the kindergarten movement emerged. The
"children's garden" was to be a place that valued a child’s enjoyment,
creative process, and intuitive investigation of materials. This is not
what many kindergartens look like today. Too often they are worksheet
driven in preparation for testing. Ironically, the timeline ends with
the quote by Pat Kane from his book The Play Ethic, featured here, on how play will be our dominant way of knowing,
doing, and creating value. Perhaps we should send legislators and
government officials on a field trip to this exhibition.

Historically, the notion of what’s
best for children changed as events of the world and advancements in
technology evolved. Similarly, the preoccupation with the best way to
educate children is going through the same process today. Perhaps it’s
because we’ve lost the focus on creativity and play in the classroom.
For more than a decade, NCLB has pushed education into mediocrity, opting
for a homogenized system to pass tests. We’ve taken the play out of
learning, and as a result, children have disengaged in a flawed process to
the tune of over a 35% dropout rate.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Today, free play to learn how to socialize, invent, and imagine is rare; instead, child's play is organized. Add in diminished recess, limited physical education, and worksheet-driven classrooms and we have a recipe for unimaginative kids who lack a passion for learning. It is no wonder that we have trouble getting kids to think creatively. If they can’t play, they can’t learn and certainly not
innovate.

This is Tony Wagner’s point in his most recent book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.
Innovation is interdisciplinary. We need to promote play, passion and
purpose for it and break free of fixed silos of learning. Creating innovators
is not part of mainstream, conventional education that is too focused
on measuring assessments through one-right answer tests. Likewise, the
Common Core with all its good intentions still forces the same
evaluation of student performance and now teachers, too.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Like the modernist of the last
century, we should see this as a push for progressive design thinking
and advocate for the value of play, creativity, and design as intrinsic parts of
student learning. The emergence of design thinking into the pedagogical
milieu of educators toward long-range solutions is growing. If
we combine this with a reformed and integrated approach to learning,
doing, and making things, there’s no telling what could grow out of it.

Interestingly enough, the Century of the Child
exhibition began with how “…the new pedagogy [kindergarten] prized
authentic expression, the inspiration of the natural world, and the
creative potential of every individual, every child.” Isn’t that what we
want today? We think yes.